MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN THE ...

the truth, but will remains enslaved to the bonds of habit. Reason has now reached yet
another moment of self-knowledge, for he now grasps not only the totality of the soul’s
inner enslavement to sin, but also the soul’s own inability to liberate itself from sin and
embrace the spiritual life in its fullness. For Bernard, the soul in such straits finds itself
in a very dangerous position, for it is now violently assailed with the temptation to
despair. If in the earlier stages of its conversion, reason entertained the self-deception
that it could by its own power master its senses and liberate its enslaved will, reason now
stands in danger of succumbing to the opposite self-deception, that its sickness is now so
serious that it has no hope of healing.
When poised on this brink of despair, Bernard insists, the soul must have mercy
on itself, and raise its heart’s ear once more to divine Voice, who now speaks to it the
third beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Mt 5:5).
That is, the soul must confess its weakness in tears, and learn to seek its comfort and
deliverance not from itself, but from above. Having once turned to itself, it must now
turn itself fully to the Word, and mourn its own poverty, brokenness, and powerlessness
before him. And here in the full confession of its misery, as Bernard has already
indicated, the Word will speak his consoling mercy to the soul. By the grace of the
Word, the soul’s tears are not shed in vain, but begin to cleanse the eye of reason for the
vision of its consolation. “Tears will purge the [soul’s] eye of darkness,” Bernard
explains, “and so sharpen its vision that it will be able to turn its gaze to the brightness of
a most radiant light.” 284
284 Conv 23 (IV, 96): “Nimirum purgatur lacrimis oculus ante caligans, et acuitur visus, ut
intendere possit in serenissimi luminis claritatem.”
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